Hampton gears up for big celebration weekend

Mayor says celebrations are appropriate given the constraints of a tight economy

July 07, 2010|By David Macaulay, dmacaulay@dailypress.com | 247-7838

HAMPTON – Months of hard work will come to fruition this weekend when Hampton celebrates its 400th birthday.

The events, which fuse the 400th anniversary celebrations with the Blackbeard Pirate Festival, begin today with the Blackbeard Grand Pirate Ball at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and conclude at 3 p.m. Sunday when the First Presbyterian Church presents the Hilton Brass.

"The 400th birthday has been in planning for several years and it's been a challenge with the economy in terms of what's appropriate in terms of celebration but also in terms of scale," said Hampton Mayor Molly Joseph Ward.

"I think the city has really come together and people have been very resourceful and done things like consolidate the birthday weekend with the Blackbeard festival."

Some aspects of the celebration are yet to come together including the arrival of a permanent statue.

Artist Lawrence Noble of Berkeley, Calif., who is best known for his sculptures of "Star Wars" figures Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda which greet visitors to the Lucasfilm campus at the Presidio in California, was selected by Hampton's legacy subcommittee last year.

The $200,000 for the project was initially slated to come from public funds but will now be raised privately.

"The statue should be funded from private dollars," Ward said. "It's entirely appropriate in our 400th year that we have a monument. I believe those resources should come from the community in the form of gifts."

Special Events Coordinator Erin Black said the statute was still on course to be built by the end of the anniversary year.

The Legacy Committee is still working on the location which will be in Carousel Park. "They are going to do the final budget for the site design and then we'll move forward with it," Black said.

Once the location is identified the fundraising effort will begin.

Initiatives to mark the anniversary year include a partnership between the city and the U.S. Postal Service to create a series of three commemorative pictorial postmarks that feature the 400th anniversary, the Blackbeard Pirate Festival and St. John's Episcopal Church.

The postmarks will only be available from the Post Office retail van located at the corner of Settler's Landing Road and King Street during the anniversary weekend.

Thousands of people are expected to converge on Hampton. The Blackbeard Pirate Festival alone is expected to attract 100,000 people, according to Black.

The 400th anniversary celebrations will be opened by the mayor at the Hampton Maritime Center at 12 p.m. Friday.

Find a complete schedule for Hampton's 11th Annual Blackbeard Pirate Festival in Friday's Ticket section. You can read more about the festival and the city's 400th anniversary at dailypress.com/hampton400.